Hacker Who Told Feds About Chelsea Manning Dead at 37

Newser — Kate Seamons

Julian Assange didn't shy away from speaking ill of the dead on Friday. The BBC reports he called hacker Adrian Lamo, who has died at age 37, a "petty conman and betrayer of basic human decency." The bad blood traces back to Lamo's central role in the downfall of Chelsea Manning, who told Lamo of the military material she had secretly passed on to WikiLeaks.

Lamo turned Manning in, leading to a 35-year sentence that then-President Obama later commuted. The Wichita Eagle reports Lamo was found dead in a Wichita, Kansas, apartment Wednesday.

Authorities provided no cause of death, but said it did not appear suspicious.

The Guardian reports Manning contacted Lamo online in 2010 after reading an article about him, and has this quote from Lamo: "Had I done nothing, I would always have been left wondering whether the hundreds of thousands of documents that had been leaked to unknown third parties would end up costing lives, either directly or indirectly." Wired profiled the hacker in 2002, two years before he was convicted of breaking into the New York Times' computers, describing him as living out of a backpack and under a bridge, all while exposing companies' security holes.